More than Just Me

Blogging the Booker 2014/4

To say that I love family sagas would be an understatement. Plantagenets, Pallisers, Cazalets, Yorkists, Stuarts (naturally!), Mehra, Princes of Gwynedd – name any surname you like, if there is a book about them then I have read it or have it on my pile or I am waiting to hear about it. I love the internecine squabbles, the paterfamilias, the matriarchs, the lot. So imagine my joy when I started to read The Lives of Others [not to be confused by the book of the film] by Neel Mukherjee.

Indian family sagas are a class apart, think of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, or any novel by Rohinton Mistry. This is largely because it is common for them all to live in the same house…wonderful (for the reader anyway), perhaps not so wonderful for the Bengali daughters-in-law; for the woman leaves her home and lives…